IzPack is an installers generator for the Java platform. It produces lightweight installers that can be run on any operating system where a Java virtual machine is available. Depending on the operating system, it can be launched by a double-click or a simple 'java -jar installer.jar' on a shell. The most common use is to distribute applications for the Java platform, but you can also use it for other kinds of projects. The main benefit of IzPack is that it provides a clean and unique way of distributing a project to users using different operating systems. IzPack is reported to run on :

Unix-like systems, mostly Linux and BSD

MacOS X

Windows variants

A big care has been put in making IzPack as small as possible in order to reduce the weight of IzPack itself in the final installer archive. Also, IzPack has been designed around modularity and flexibility. As a consequence, you are able to specify how your installer should be by selecting the panels that you want to show to the final user. Sometimes there are even several panels for the same usage so that you can pick the one that suits the best your needs. If ever you don't find your way through the available panels, you can still develop your own ones with the nice and easy IzPack API. There's even an embedded XML parser !